And a Protector You Shall Receive
by aelurus
Summary: Minerva learns the Patronus Charm. With dark times approaching, where does one turn to find hope?


_Note: I wrote the greater part of this a year ago, abandoned it, and then came back to finish it in a big hurry because I know I'm about to be proven totally wrong about Minerva's past when Pottermore opens up! I cannot tell you how over-the-moon-excited I am to read her full backstory! Still, I'm a bit sad that I won't have time to finish writing my way through the full storyline of my own version of her backstory, which I started actively working on a couple of years ago. Oh, well—in JKR we trust._

* * *

><p><em>"Expecto patronum!<em>"

There was nothing but a thin stream of silver, vanishing in seconds. Again. Minerva lowered her wand and turned to Dumbledore, her expression indignant.

"I've got to be doing something wrong. The incantation, or the wand movement. Can you show me once more?"

"I am sure you've got it right, but if you wish... _Expecto patronum._"

The huge, luminous phoenix filled the darkened Transfiguration classroom, silently flying in circles around the pair. Minerva, transfixed as ever by its graceful light, didn't speak until it faded.

"You're right. I'm doing it all by the book," she said, frowning.

"If I may, what was the memory you chose?" he asked her.

"I thought of the first time I transformed. If that wasn't happy, I hardly know what is."

"A happy memory won't do, Minerva," he said quietly. "It must be the single happiest memory you possess. Think." He lightly hoisted himself atop her teacher's desk, a patient expression on his face. "It may take some time to find it, but we have plenty of that yet."

Minerva noted that his maddeningly long legs still reached the floor, and amused despite her vexation, she turned away, beginning to pace down the nearest row of student desks. _The happiest memory I possess. This is not a difficult task. Think, Minerva._

She closed her eyes, letting her hands graze the desks as she walked past; touch and a decade of experience walking up and down these aisles guided her. She could not recall anything in particular that had made her extraordinarily happy during her teaching career so far. The classroom successes of her students filled her with a kind of warm pride, to be sure, but even the first instance of it ten years ago (Devlin Whitehorn, who had been so shocked at his perfect four-hole button that he'd dropped his wand) didn't seem quite enough... She must search earlier, then.

Dumbledore was humming at the front of the room, and as she neared she opened her eyes a shade. He remained in the same position, now studying his wand idly, a steadily tapping foot the only indication of his humming. She passed him and began to make her way up the next aisle. As she did so, she realized what he was humming.

_A wedding march, Albus Dumbledore. Your subtlety astonishes me._

Minerva hesitantly allowed herself, then, to remember walking down a different kind of aisle, a much longer, brighter one than this. _Hugh_. She had hoped to avoid using memories of him, but she now realized it was a terrible disservice to try and ignore thoughts of him, not when—

—_there he was, still sprawled on the floor beside the Portkey, uncaring, unmoving, breathing just enough to live. Albus had tried to send her away ("__You mustn't see him this way, Minerva. This isn't the man you know anymore.__"), but she had pulled away from his grasp. How could she not look at him? She had refused to believe it, the idea of dementors in Peru was ludicrous, impossible, and it wasn't as if he'd gone alone, hadn't Macnair from his department gone as well? She knelt down, and he was still staring up at the ceiling._

_It was his eyes. She believed it when she saw Hugh's eyes. They were dull blue orbs in his head, devoid of that starry quality they had always carried when he looked at her. That was why she had married him, those eyes, because—to surrender to such a cliché—they were the one thing she wanted to see when she woke up every morning, crinkling at the corners and knowing just a little too much._

_It was like a dementor was there in Dumbledore's office now, taking all of the light, warm things out of the world as she knelt there staring at her shell of a husband. Her heart pounded with a horrible liveliness in her chest and she could feel it in her ears: thump, thump, thump..._

_"Minerva," Dumbledore whispered beside her after a moment, after an eternity, "we must—"_

_"Why?" was all she could bear to say, and her voice seemed to come from miles away. "Why did this happen?"_

_"We will find out. I swear to you, we will," he told her. "But his body... He is alive, but without the soul, he cannot help us. Minerva," Dumbledore said softly once more, touching her arm, "it wouldn't do to keep him like this. I can call Horace now if you wish. He has—potions. It would be kinder..."_

_"Now?" she echoed, pressing her and Hugh's hands together. He was so warm. Hope leapt wildly within her, and she looked toward his face again._

_It was still blank, so blank that he could have been one of the faceless men who had populated her nightmares as a child. She quickly dropped her gaze and let go of the hand._

_"Poisons, you mean," she said abruptly, not looking at Dumbledore's face either._

_"He would not feel it. A Sleeping Draught first, then—"_

_"All right."_

_Dimly, Minerva heard him get to his feet and walk to the fireplace. She shut her eyes tightly and reached for Hugh's hand again. She tried to ignore the life in his veins as she slowly slipped the ring off his finger—_

"Minerva?"

She didn't know when she had stopped walking, but she had, and now she was leaning heavily on a desk halfway down the row. She looked up with reluctance.

Dumbledore had stopped examining his wand, stopped humming. He was looking at her carefully through the darkness, moonlight glinting delicately off the spectacles at the end of his nose.

"Happy memories," he said. "Remember."

She nodded and straightened herself. _Get out of it. That wasn't Hugh. Not the Hugh you knew. _She was walking down the aisle again.

_It needs to be a memory of Hugh. Nothing else has worked._

Her thoughts returned to their wedding day. Which moment?

—

_She turned with Hugh to face the crowd, feeling breathless and dazed with bliss. A fresh breeze swept her face as her gaze traveled across their audience. Dumbledore had gotten to his feet in the front row and was joining the clapping. The moment before her eyes made contact with his, she blinked._

_In that single blink, the world seemed to do nothing less than completely renew itself. The old sun died and was immediately reborn; new waters rushed into the harbor below; the ground was cleansed and dropped back into the earth. She felt lighter than she had in ages._

_He was smiling at her, and her lips curved into a wider smile. Gratitude welled up within her, mingling with the happiness and hope already present; gratitude for the job he had offered her and gratitude for his reappearance in her life. Everything was going to be right again. She was coming back home, and now she had Hugh. There was more future at Hogwarts than anywhere else in the world._

Minerva merely whispered this time, afraid of breaking up the blooming, gravityless feeling in her stomach, "_Expecto patronum._"

From the tip of her wand leapt a four-legged shape, landing lightly in midair. The cat, larger than life, made its brisk way to the nearest moonlit window, sat, and licked a paw. After a moment it passed through the glass, and dissolved. The moonlight that remained in its wake seemed dull in comparison.

"And a protector you shall receive," Dumbledore murmured. "Excellent, Minerva. Excellent."

"And the communication modification?"

"That, I think, we shall leave for tomorrow evening. It is not a difficult thing, merely a variation on the sentient-object animation spells covered in seventh year N.E.W.T.s. As I recall those were your particular specialty." He smiled at her. "Knowing you, you shall have discovered my little trick before breakfast tomorrow."

Minerva snorted lightly. "With third-year essays to finish marking before mid-morning? More likely _you_ shall discover my little frayed temper come lunchtime."

Dumbledore chuckled and stood, running a hand over the smooth surface of his former desk. "I will leave you to work, then. Unless you were planning to take your marking with you to your rooms? I would be delighted to walk you up."

Still standing halfway down the aisle, she began to make her way toward the front of the room, smiling at Dumbledore to indicate her acceptance of his offer. He returned the smile, waiting for her patiently, and for a sudden, disorienting instant she felt a curious twinge at the sight of him standing there as she approached down the aisle, the moment a ghostly echo of the memories dredged up tonight.

Her common sense took over at once and banished the feeling, but as she rounded the desk to collect her papers, Minerva's thoughts were left in a restless swirl. She still felt overwhelmed by her memories, and by a vague realization produced by that moment seconds ago...

She stilled and looked up at Dumbledore, who was watching her. "Actually, I think I'll stay down here after all. I'll just take these next door to my office."

He bowed his head. "Then I'll say good night, Professor."

He was halfway to the door when Minerva called to him. "Albus?"

Dumbledore turned back around, his expression unreadable.

"Do you think I'll need to use this spell, in the future? For—for my own protection?"

It had been a long time since Minerva had allowed herself to sound fearful in front of him.

"I cannot answer that with certainty," Dumbledore said after a moment, a touch of bitterness entering his tone. "It is true that Lord Voldemort is likely to recruit the dementors to his cause, but it is also true that he will not have reason to attack Hogwarts while I am here."

He softened his voice, perhaps perceiving that hearing this had hardly comforted her at all. "I understand your fear, Minerva. But consider that you have just mastered the greatest weapon possible against the dementors: hope. You will find, with practice, that the Patronus is not so much a spell as it is a talisman, which you constantly carry with you as you do your most cherished memories."

A long pause followed, during which Minerva thought he looked as though he knew exactly what he wanted to say, but was for whatever reason cautious of saying it.

"You know, of course," he finally spoke, "that I will do everything in my power to keep you from harm."

She believed him.

— end —


End file.
